FAS vs. The Grannies

Every now and again Mother Cricket opens one lazy eye and decides not to deliver the "cucumber of life", but instead she bestows bountiful and garlanded munificence on the FAS diaspora. Today's epic against the Grannies was just that.

A host of Mortilicious arousing stats were delivered:

• Today's game was the second highest scoring in FAS history with 567 runs.
• It was the sixth time we've had three half-centuries in an innings.
• Grannies' 281 was the highest second innings in any FAS game.
• Curtainisuraus Rex's performance was the second-best all-round effort for FAS this decade - and 18th all-time.
• Chris Barras has gone past Tom Hall to #6 on the top run-scorers list.
• Big Jim has become the fourth FAS player to score 2000 runs.
• Chris Barras joined James Wyatt (2010) as the second player to have been the top run-scorer for a season in a single innings (both coincidentally with 104 runs).
• It's the first time we've had two century partnerships in one innings.

And oh my, what about Grumple? But we shall come to that in a wee while. The point so well made by Sven after the match is that this game pivoted on about a dozen key moments, and everyone played a part - Sven himself saving eight runs in the deep, the Sea Lion snaring probably their best batter with a super catch. Tight middle overs from The Royal and United Bank and Charlie the Kosovan Window Cleaner, The Boy Toy keeping them in the hunt with his economy rate which was reminiscent of Weimar Republic inflation. Houders with a vital run out. Bossman appearing, like the Full Monty FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY to get a key wicket when all was seemingly lost, and a "rolling back the years" leg-side stumping of their other gun by none other than our very own "easily distinguished from a ray of sunshine" Grumple.

But I get ahead of myself.

The first suggestion that we were in BTL was when the Grannies turned up en bons temps for the scheduled start. And no, in case you ask, Will Siebs was not dead and replaced by a replicant, but Matt had had him down Chez Siebs the night before and was i/c of logistics. Who says parenting stops when they graduate . . .

So Jimmus loses the toss and we are inserted. And now dear reader we truly fall through the looking glass. We reach 286/3 off 44 overs. Jimmus elegantly strokes 59 (off 62 balls), The Curtainisuraus Rex smashed 68 (off 54 balls) and, a mere six weeks after his full hip replacement, Grumple scores a quite magnificent 104 red (off 107 balls). Wow, wow, wow. It is at this point when science and art intersect, for we are in the nuanced crazy world of declaration territory. We must give and we must taketh away, in order to ensure that we leave enough breadcrumbs to keep them interested. The usual calculation is that the side batting second has less overs than the first. Jimmus turned this on its head, offering them one more over than us and a further 3.2 more courtesy of the number of wides and no balls we delivered. In fact it would have been a further two overs had we not, errr, played a little cleverly with time as the last 20 approached.

When this works, this is the secret sauce of FAS that makes us (and our wonderful game) so special, as envisaged by our Founder, the fine balance of a declaration is full of genuine peril. And when it works it is truly alchemy. The French describe the [male - ed.] orgasm as "le petit mort", the reality is that this is a more fitting description of declaration cricket. When it works, that is. Make no bones about it, Baz would have absolutely loved this game. We were truly never really in the hunt, the Grannies were at the required rate of 6 from ball one until the last over, with a host of decent cricketers. At the start of the last over they were 9 down and needed 6, ultimately falling those 6 short. The key for us was to just stick at it and grizz it out, reminiscent of the defining moment of Ian Hay's The First Hundred Thousand, where he captures the quiet, resolute determination of ordinary Brits transitioning into wartime soldiers as the unit prepares to move toward the Battle of Loos [Any link to Pam's cooking? - ed.] in September 1915. Rather than expressing boastful patriotism, the passage reflects the collective, stubborn British virtue of holding on until the end is accomplished. He could have been describing the yeoman Fazzers at Newenden that sun kissed Saturday in September:

". . . we silently pray, in our dour and inarticulate hearts, that the supreme British virtue—the virtue of holding on, and holding on, and holding on, until our end is accomplished - may not be found wanting in a single one of us."

The "cucumber of life" is, as anyone who's spent more than ten seconds with Cliff in the last few years knows, is at one moment in your hands . . . and the next is rammed up your arse.
[Return to main text.]

For non-Red Dwarf aficionados BTL is short for "Better Than Life", an ultra-addictive, brain-plugging virtual reality computer game that makes the player's deepest fantasies and desires come true (so hence the complete opposite of most cricket games).
[Return to main text.]